Loyalty programs (Retail essentials) [AX 2012]

Updated: November 24, 2014

A loyalty program can help increase customer loyalty by rewarding customers for buying products in your retail stores. In Retail essentials, you can set up simple or complex loyalty programs that apply across your legal entities in any retail channel. You can set up the loyalty feature to include the following options:

Set up the types of rewards that you offer in your loyalty programs and track participation in your loyalty programs.

Set up loyalty programs to represent the different reward incentives that you offer. You can include loyalty program tiers to offer greater incentives and rewards to customers who shop more frequently or spend more money in your stores.

Define earning rules to identify the activities that a customer must complete to earn rewards. You can also define redemption rules to identify when and how a customer can redeem rewards.

Issue loyalty cards from any retail channel that participates in your loyalty programs, and link loyalty cards to one or more loyalty programs that the customer can participate in. You can also link a customer record to a loyalty card to enable the customer to pool loyalty points from multiple cards and redeem them.

Manually adjust loyalty cards or transfer the loyalty rewards balance from one card to another to accommodate or reward a customer.

You must set up a payment method before a loyalty card can be used at a register and loyalty points can be redeemed as part of a loyalty program. You must also add the loyalty payment method to the retail channel for customers to be able to redeem their loyalty points as payment for products.

Set up a loyalty type payment method, and then assign the loyalty payment method to the retail channels that are participating in the loyalty program.

Date intervals provide a flexible way to set the time span that applies to loyalty tiers. Use date intervals to specify the length of time a customer can stay in a tier or to determine the time period in which the customer must complete an activity to qualify for a tier.

Date intervals only apply if you use tiers in your loyalty programs. You select the date interval that applies to program tiers, and also the date intervals that apply to program tier rules.

Reward points are the types of reward that you offer to your customers. Rewards points can be redeemable or non-redeemable. Redeemable reward points can be exchanged for products. Non-redeemable reward points are used for tracking purposes or to advance a customer to the next tier in a loyalty program.

Reward points are referenced in tier rules and are used to qualify a customer for a specific tier. Reward points are also referenced in loyalty schemes in earning and redemption rules. In earning rules, you specify the rewards that a customer can earn for a specific activity. In redemption rules, you specify the reward that the customer can redeem.

Loyalty programs are the core loyalty entity that you offer. Each loyalty program can also have zero-to-many loyalty tiers assigned to it.

Discounts and price groups are assigned to the loyalty programs at either the program level or the loyalty tier level.

You create loyalty schemes for your loyalty programs. You assign loyalty cards to your loyalty programs, and loyalty cards can be assigned to a customer. Retail channels participate in the loyalty programs that are assigned to the loyalty schemes. Any customer who holds a loyalty card can participate in the loyalty programs that are assigned to the card.

Loyalty tiers are optional levels that you can define for your loyalty programs. You can set up base discounts and rewards for all customers who participate in the loyalty program, and you can set up additional discounts and rewards for customers who earn the different levels in the program. For each loyalty tier you define, you can set up the rules that qualify a customer for each tier. You can also define how long a customer can remain in that tier after they have reached it.

Loyalty tiers and loyalty tier rules are defined in the loyalty programs. If you don’t define any loyalty tiers, all customers who participate in the loyalty program qualify for the discounts that you assign in the loyalty program price group.

If you define loyalty tiers, you can set up earning rules and redemption rules for the loyalty tiers in the loyalty scheme.

Loyalty schemes specify the earning rules and redemption rules that apply to a selected loyalty program. You assign retail channels to a loyalty scheme to identify which loyalty program, earning rules, and redemption rules apply to a retail store.

A loyalty scheme is assigned to a loyalty program and to retail channels. You can assign many loyalty schemes to the same loyalty program, and you can assign many loyalty schemes to many retail channels.

A loyalty card entitles the card holder to participate in the loyalty programs that are assigned to the card. Loyalty cards can be issued anonymously, or they can be assigned to a specific customer. You can view the loyalty transactions for a specific card, and you can view a summary of loyalty points that have been accumulated on the card. You can issue loyalty cards from any retail channel.

You can also manually adjust a loyalty card to upgrade the customer to a different tier, add loyalty points, or transfer the loyalty point balance from one card to another.